Share this Story

Download: FRK76 Update for the Original Motorola DROID

The “special project” for the original Motorola DROID has started as of the 18th and is available today for anyone running stock FRG83G to load. It’s only a double-shot of security fixes, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t jump to it if you are one of the few non-rooted OG owners. This new build is labeled as FRK76.

I received the 2.2.3 FRK76 update for my original stock Droid on Wednesday morning. After it rebooted I had no cell service. I had two bars but they never changed. No data service at all. I did not think to try making a phone call. I rebooted the phone and all was well.

Two hours later I had the same issue. The phone showed two bars of service but there wasn’t any. It never moved off two bars no matter where I moved. I rebooted the phone again (this was about 7 AM) and all was well again.

Then last night about 11 PM I noticed the same thing. Two bars and all apps reported “no network”. I attempted to go into Airplane Mode to turn off the cell modem and the box got checked and dimmed but then it hung there. It usually takes a second or so. I went in and out of Settings but it was still dim and hung up.

I rebooted the phone again after about five minutes and it came up in Airplane Mode. I took it out of Airplane Mode and about an hour later it showed I had a voicemail but there was nothing in the Call Log. I listened to the voicemail and it had come in at 9 PM, two hours before I noticed the phone was not working. It had been on my desk next to me the entire night with the ringer on so there’s no way I missed the call. It looks like this is affecting voice as well as data, which I guess is to be expected.

Phone storage is 119 MB available, which is about where it’s been for months. I usually rebooted the phone every week or two before this last update. It’s been flawless for the past two years.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. At least it’s not overheating.

Thanks,

Ray

Anonymous

Is anybody else having problems with this update? I installed it this morning and my OG has been overheating like crazy ever since. I’m averaging 3 hours before my battery dies and I’m not even using it. I’m just letting it sit there to see if it keeps overheating. I’ve had to swap batteries 4-5 times today and have only spent probably less than ten minutes the entire day with the screen on. Airplane mode cools it down but once I switch back over it starts heating up again even with full reception, up to 125 degrees earlier. Phone was fine yesterday, now it’s gone to hell since installing this update

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000418970841 W Paul Schenck

Still using my 2 year old! The OTA pushed in last night with no problems. I don’t see any changes, but it just feels zippier.

OG-MG

I’m on my third OG Droid… They all have the same freezing and slow to launch problems. I can’t wait until April when my upgrade is up. I’m not sure if I want another Motorola though. I may go Samsung. I’m not to hip on HTC to much crap on there. I need an Idroid with custom abilities and software updates. Someday I think Apple is going to crack open there 72 billion dollar piggy bank and build their own Iplant. Until then I have no Idea what I want even BB looks good. Stable OS and clean lines.

Anonymous

My boss is still on an OG he is rooted and was wondering how he should bypass the message for the update being pushed to his phone.

Tevisofelidor

I clicked on the update this morning and my rooted OG’s bootloader refused the update and turned off the notifier… apparently my Droid DOES use common sense… even when I don’t LoL

whoster69

So what happens if I factory reset my phone? Do I need to do this again?

Am I the only one that updated their OG Droid? Hopefully this fixes the SMS bug. I am now running android 2.2.3 on my OG! I thought I would never see the day.

Sarra1833

Sad thing is, it’s making my phone FC all the time and phone won’t answer easily and it freezes everything. I have to reboot a LOT since the upgrade. Very unhappy with it Causing tons of problems. People have to call twice because the first time says my phone is out of service. Or gmail won’t open or other things freeze and FC. Unimpressed.

Anonymous

there “special project” is just a bug fix update? <.<

Jd

This looks like a sure fire way to crash the Droid for everyone who hasn’t upgraded by now.

Captmilk

Is there a OG owner that isn’t rooted?

Anonymous

Rooted.. Upgraded handsets… Then unrooted my OG. I still own it though. Does that count?

Cbes

Probably the great majority of users who have more important things to accomplish!!

Sarra1833

I’ve had mine for 2 years now and never rooted. I don’t understand it, I don’t want to ruin my phone I pay so much money for. I don’t need it.

Anonymous

The Droid isn’t completely dead to Motorola? Whoa…

Greg Williams

I think the only way people would have been happy with the “special project” was IF Motorola sent all current droid owners a box containing:

– a new motherboard (1.5 GHz dual core processor, 1 GB RAM, NFC chip, LTE…)
– a bigger screen (4.5″) that can be easily snapped into place and allows the phone to still fit in small hands
– a copy of ICS

John Landgrave

Sooo… a Droid RAZR within a couple of months + NFC?

Greg Williams

If I install this will my phone become a Galaxy Nexus?

http://www.facebook.com/TJHRULZ tjhrulz

OG droid, still kicking after two years

Jason Frasier

I assume this update will be pushed out to users shortly?

Anonymous

This is probably the build they are testing. The group that is. If no issues are encountered then it goes out to the public.

Jason Frasier

Thanks for the info sir.

Paul

Hopefully this is a sign of longer software support for their phones.

http://twitter.com/PhilStout Phil

I would think that this is being done to protect Motorola from litigation by anyone who might have had information stolen due to the security gaps. No necessarily longer development on software or OS updates

Anonymous

Right on the money. Its like the formula they use for recalls in fight club. If its not saving the company money, they don’t do it.

John Landgrave

Wait. Out of all of the valuable lessons potentially learned from Fight Club, that’s the one that you pick?

Just messing with you, btw.

StephenParkhum

I’m pretty surprised that they’re even still updating this.
But I personally think the DX needs a big update.
My camera has been freezing 1 out of 3 times I use it.

http://twitter.com/PainProphet TeHJones

So what EXACTLY does this fix? Yeah I heard it’s some security fixes and that’s it…. but can we get some detail??? This isn’t a stab at DL, but more at Verizon. I’d love to see a full list of fixes for android updates like other software companies provide… I’m sure it’s available, just too busy with work to look it up, well maybe it’s laziness because I’m surfing the web too!

Br_hermon

Ok so I know I’m super late to the game on this but… If I receive this update (non rooted, yeah that’s right I haven’t done it yet…), will I still be able to root using super1click and then install ROMs like normal? Or should I stay on FRG83G and root?

Greg Morgan

Wait…are their any unrooted og droid owners out there?

EC8CH

out there, yes.

in here… no

Anonymous

Not true, I haven’t rooted my phone after my first replacement, but I will for sure overclock it to 3GHZ once the Galaxy Nexus is in my hands!

EC8CH

DROID WANT ROOT!

Pfigurella

In here yes, too.

Anonymous

I formerly was until I upgraded

OGDroiduser94

My OG Droid Is Unrooted. What Happens To My Droid If I Root It?

Jgoose71

Nothing, except you piss off the man because you get access to all the pay services without paying…

Anonymous

Yes. I tried rooted my OG a long time ago, jacked it all up. I am not technologically savvy like you all here on this site. So, I’m just holding on until I can find the “next big thing”. Seems that a new phone comes out every couple of weeks.

Mike Mahoney

yes, i just got the update last night, wondering if it had to do with the CarrierIQ stuff

FortitudineVincimus

jesus what a joke.. A little late don’t they think? Maybe useful like a year ago. what a dumb bit of effort to waste.

Anonymous

Yet, you appear to be the only one that seems to have a problem with this. Well, guess you can’t make everyone happy.

I for one, applaud Motorola. A midst all of the new phones, new software builds, bug fixes on other devices, they manage to find the time to provide an update to people that still use this phone. Which (irregardless of what you may think) includes a good number of people.

Anonymous

This doesn’t fix the 20 second wait for the home screen to re-appear?

John

LOL. A new phone certainly would

FortitudineVincimus

nothing could ever fix that.. best you could do was 1) better launcher 2) over-clock and 3) use something like swapper to keep launcher in memory

Anonymous

Best thing to fix it is to solder an extra 256-768 MBs RAM to the phone =p. If my Droid had an extra 256 MBs RAM, it would still be a really good phone, IMO. Any 2.3+ ROM runs like garbage on it due to this even with all the memory tweaks in the world.

http://twitter.com/PhilStout Phil

uhhh… I think you ment processor. Yes ram would help but you need a better processor. These are android phones and not Microsoft PC’s

Anonymous

Nope, meant RAM. My CPU is running at 1.1 GHz and it’s still lagging like crazy because 256 MBs of RAM isn’t enough to run more than a few services in the background before your launcher constantly gets purged from RAM, resulting in a nice lagfest when you actually go to use your phone.

Rmsh

I have an OG Droid too and I would love to ram it up also.

Pfigurella

Up where?

http://twitter.com/_majesty majesty

hahahahaha…………………………..HAHAHAHA

Anthony Armando

confirm. i was having major issues with my phone lagging out like crazy and tried a ton of different kernals and cpu settings. i had turned on monitor system memory in project elite settings and was noticing my ram usage jumping all over the place so i started deleting stuff, even stuff i liked/used. after i removed swype and handsent the phone started actually working when i asked it to. i removed a couple other running services and its been great.

prior to this i had pretty much stopped using my phone for anything other than a random text, phone calls, and a few apps. mainly because there was a huge delay in pretty much any action i took; it should not take me 3 minutes to send a 4 word text message.

i was begging for a new phone to be released! now i can wait.

Weasel

If we could only get RAM with a 1ghz access speed. Over 50 years and the von neumann bottleneck is still a problem.

PaulyD

Well, with the RAZR, Rezound, Nexus and Droid4 all releasing in Q4 of this year, there will be no reason for anyone to be still using an OG Droid in 2012.
We finally have a few good options to choose from to replace our OG- it will be sad, but all good things need to come to an end. I also think 25 months using the same phone is a happy ending.
Farewell OG!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=25419359 James De Angelis

og droid is now my party phone, use the 16gb sd card for music, this way i can keep my droid inc 2 on me and the og on music via aux cable… gotta love it

michael arazan

I’m still using OG Droid. Still waiting for Nexus. At this point, I’m thinking a couple guys at Google are just trolling everyone to see how many pissed off rants the can get in every tech blog comment section.
This is my rant: By the time Nexus comes out There will be 4 more mot, htc, samsung phones released and the Nexus 2 will be rumored to be out in April. Lol

About Droid Life

We consider ourselves to have the greatest Android community in the world, here at Droid Life. We talk general news, feature apps, review phones, and even teach you how to hack a little. But most importantly, there is no place on the internet that has the reader participation that we do and consider ourselves to be completely community driven. If you were looking for the best place to learn about Android and talk with like-minded folks about all things tech, then Droid Life is for you.